The Sarah Jane Adventures: Lost In Time

One of the many ways in which The Sarah Jane Adventures is like classic Doctor Who is in how much the tone and style of the show varies from week to week. In class Doctor Who you could go from the tedious boredom of Sarn in Planet of Fire to the gritty, desperate drama of The Caves of Androzani right through to the absolute bollocks that is The Twin Dilemma in the space of just three stories. Likewise, The Sarah Jane Adventures allows you to go from a reasonably chilling ghost story to a working class alien Mona Lisa right through to farting aliens trying to take over the world using Nestle Clusters in the space of three adventures. In a sense, it is good that this happens because you never quite know what you are going to get. Of course, it also means that you could end up with a sub-par story for two weeks...

Lost in Time, however, raises the stakes. Not only is it very different to the story that went before, it also manages to tell four different stories with radically different tones across its 60 minutes. As a result, it never pauses for breath and sucks the viewer into its very diverse times. Clyde fights Nazis in rural World War Two; Rani witnesses the last days of Lady Jane Grey; Sarah Jane ghost hunts in the past. And all the while they are watched over by a mysterious (in that we are never given an explanation rather than him actually being enigmatic in his realisation on screen) by a strange Shopkeeper and his parrot. It might sound all over the place and a bit surreal. Hell, it is all over the place and a bit surreal. But that's why it works; there is so much happening that you can't help but find a part of the story to latch on to and enjoy.

There are downsides. I was left with the feeling that this whole story contained a number of plots because not one of the plots could actually sustain a full-length story on its own. And the linking narrative involving the Shopkeeper was very weak, in all honesty. It was nothing more than a catalyst for much more interesting action elsewhere. Furthermore, the resolution of the tedious "crisis" underpinning the story was lacklustre and anti-climatic. If your resolution involves a charisma lacking old lady turning up with a key to make everything alright again, then its probably time to go back to the drawing board and come up with something else. Preferably something good.

But, as a collection of stories, it worked. In fact, it is a good showcase for the series - it presented a neat summary of the types of stories the show does well. And it left me wondering just what the hell they would come up with next...